Love is the Message, The Message is Death

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      Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, The Message is Death, 2016, single-channel high-definition digital video, color, sound; 07:25 minutes, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Joint museum purchase with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of Nion T. McEvoy, Chair of SAAM Commission (20162018), and McEvoy’s fellow Commissioners in his honor; additional funding provided by Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest Fund, 2020.001., 2020.3, © 2016, Arthur Jafa. Image courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome.

      Artwork Details

      Title
      Love is the Message, The Message is Death
      Artist
      Date
      2016
      Location
      Not on view
      Copyright
      © 2016, Arthur Jafa. Image courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome.
      Credit Line
      Joint museum purchase with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of Nion T. McEvoy, Chair of SAAM Commission (20162018), and McEvoy’s fellow Commissioners in his honor; additional funding provided by Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest Fund, 2020.001.
      Mediums Description
      single-channel high-definition digital video, color, sound; 07:25 minutes
      Classifications
      Subjects
      • Portrait male — King, Martin Luther, Jr.
      • Occupation — other — reformer
      • Allegory — passion — love
      • History — United States — Black History
      • Allegory — death
      • African American
      • Ceremony — wedding
      • Figure group
      Object Number
      2020.3

      Artwork Description

      Jafa is an artist and filmmaker with a lifelong practice of compiling visual material he deems striking and relevant to understanding Black life in the United States. Long admired for his cinematography, Jafa is now equally known for videos, photographic works, and sculptural installations that feature in art spaces around the world.

      Love is the Message, The Message is Death offers a swift-moving montage of the African American experience as captured in moving images, from nineteenth-century silent films to today's camera phone recordings of police killing unarmed civilians. Clips sourced from the internet are interwoven with Jafa's own home movies and past projects, and set to Kayne West's 2016 gospel-hip-hop anthem, "Ultralight Beam," itself a compendium of Black music history and voices. The selection whiplashes viewers between moments of celebration and mourning, humor and crisis, profound historical significance and everyday intimacy. Throughout, Jafa edits and adjusts playback speeds to mimic the exceptional tempo and tone control of Black musicians. This technique represents one way in which he pursues his long-stated goal of a "Black cinema with the power, beauty, and alienation of Black music."

      Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies, 2023

      Works by this artist (1 item)

      Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, The Message is Death, 2016, single-channel high-definition digital video, color, sound; 07:25 minutes, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Joint museum purchase with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of Nion T. McEvoy, Chair of SAAM Commission (2016-2018), and McEvoy's fellow Commissioners in his honor; additional funding provided by Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest Fund, 2020.001., 2020.3, © 2016, Arthur Jafa. Image courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome.
      Love is the Message, The Message is Death
      Date2016
      single-channel high-definition digital video, color, sound; 07:25 minutes
      Not on view

      Videos

      Related Books

      The cover of the publication Musical Thinking New Video Art & Sonic Strategies
      Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies 
      Exploring the powerful resonances between recent video art and popular music, the exhibition Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies features ten leading contemporary artists and the work.

      Exhibitions

      Media - 2020.54.1 - SAAM-2020.54.1_2 - 139600
      Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies
      June 23, 2023January 28, 2024
      Musical Thinking explores the powerful resonances between recent video art and popular music.

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